Efficiency drive hitting frontline health services, doctors warn

CUTS to frontline NHS services are being imposed despite pledges that a drive to find £20bn of efficiency savings would not hit care, a poll of GPs said today.

More than half (55 per cent) of 370 family doctors questioned said cuts to services were happening in their local area and another 33 per cent said they were planned.

The survey, for Pulse magazine, also found many doctors are worried about a shift of some services from hospitals into the community – likely to happen whichever party wins the election.

Providing more services at home or in health centres has the potential to save the NHS billions of pounds a year as well as allowing people to stay in their own homes.

More than half of GPs said they supported the move in principle but 86 per cent said community services did not have the capacity to cope.

Krishna Chaturvedi, a GP in Southend-on-Sea, Essex, said he was seeing cuts in blood tests, the loss of a health visitor, community nursing services, end-of-life care and dietetic and nutrition services.

"The list is endless, " he said. "It is impossible to do the transfer of services from secondary care to the community when there are so many problems of nurse employment as well as a reduction in services."